Webdesigninformer.com

Andy Budd Go to the source

In a fantastically timed bit of linkbait, Ryan Carson called bullshit on the title of “UX Professional” while attending the dConstruct conference we organise in Brighton. At the conference we announced that we were hiring a Senior User Experience Designer so it would be easy to put two and two together and assume that he was calling us out. However I actually understand where he’s coming from. I don’t agree with him mind, but I do understand. Back in the early days of the web you just had web designers… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

As I’ve waffled about before on The Hickensian, I’m on the never ending search for the right digital media centre setup. For quite a while now, the PS3 has given me what I want, due to it’s ability to do many things in one package . The only areas where it lets me down is that its too fussy about video formats, and a lack of folders to organise videos on its hard drive. It wins over a HTPC for me, because it’s designed to be controlled by a remote, rather than keyboard and mouse. I also own an original Apple TV. While its 160gb HD isn’t enough for a movie collection, it is for my music, and it grabs new albums from my Mac without me having to think about it… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Twitter for iPad : Finally, an iPad Twitter app I can use without cursing the UI. If it detects a reply, it will show the conversation from the individuals included ( screenshot ). If it detects a URL, it displays the web page ( screenshot ). … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Just How Popular are List Posts? : Collis Ta’eed, after mentioning list posts garner almost seven times as much as his site’s traffic mainstay of reviews, provides this wise observation: The reality is that list posts don’t build a great blog. The problem with lists themselves is that they tend to lack a voice. When a publication has no voice, there’s really nothing to differentiate it from another publication that publishes similar lists. Rather I think of them as traffic traps to catch new readers and to introduce them to our regular content types: reviews and how-to posts… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg: A Path to an Open Internet : The CEOs of Google and Verizon authored an opinion piece in The Washington Post today, which closes with this statement: There are hundreds of millions of Internet users in the United States, and no two companies should be so presumptuous as to think they can solve this challenge alone. It is up to policymakers to establish broadband policy for the country. We are eager to work with Congress, the FCC and other interested parties to get this right. We hope that our proposal provides some concrete ideas to move this process forward. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I recently created a new Nina character for WooThemes, but this time, the post about the work is on the WooThemes Blog! Comment on this … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Drew Strojny from the ThemeFoundry (who I knew from his lovely Traction theme ) recently asked me if I’d like to create a new WordPress theme for him. The offer-I-couldn’t-refuse was complete creative freedom, and the opportunity to make the design process visible. That doesn’t mean ‘open’ in the sense of ‘everything being up for discussion with the internets’ (that way madness lies), but documenting the steps as we go. Everyone has a different workflow, and my workflow isn’t necessarily the right approach for anyone else and vice versa. However, I still love hearing others explain their thought process – the ‘Design Eye’ panels at SXSW spring immediately to mind as being good examples. So on this blog, and on my dribbble account, I’ll be recording what happens as it goes along… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Is CSS the New Photoshop? : John Nack, Photoshop’s principal product manager: As people can do more and more in code, it makes sense to ask whether even to use Photoshop in designing Web content. I think Adobe should be freaking out a bit, but in a constructive way…. As for Photoshop, we could either teach the app to speak HTML natively (via live HTML layers ), or we could translate Photoshop-native artwork into HTML (e.g. ‘copy this button/text as HTML/CSS’). It’s not yet clear to me, however, how such code would smoothly integrate into one’s projects… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

How to Make Web Content Look Stunning on iPhone 4’s Retina Display : Aral Balkan’s tutorial includes a number of helpful resources, as well as a petition to browser vendors: I’d like to suggest that browsers adopt the same naming convention that Cocoa Touch uses to find and load high-DPI versions of image and video assets. That is, if I embed an image using the following code… … it should load in flower.jpg when the device-pixel-ratio is 1 but it should attempt to find an image called flower@2x.jpg at the same relative path if device-pixel-ratio is 2 (and so on, for higher pixel-ratios), falling back to the original graphic if it can’t find a high-resolution version. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Trent Walton: Trimming the Fat : I completely agree with Trent’s observation about iPad influencing the way we design for non-iPad mediums: This site wasn’t intended solely for the iPad, though it is inspired by my experience browsing the web sans mouse. Many of the assertions I made before getting an iPad have been strengthened each time I slide, swipe and tap my way across the inter-web. Each change I’ve made (larger font size, less content/page, fewer columns) has been shaped by my belief that the future of web design lies in making browsing all play and no work. Hunching over a keyboard at a desk and squinting at an overstuffed page with 12px font is work you don’t get paid to do, so why do it? Lovely redesign too, Trent… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

IDSGN’s Monthly Review, vol. IV : Love the layout of these, not to mention the content they springboard over to. See also vol. I , vol. II , and vol. III . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

B&H Video Tripod Buying Guide : Tripods, also known sticks in film lingo, are a different beast when it comes to video vs. photography. Don’t make the mistake of assuming a tripod built for photography will also work for video. This guide explains a few things to look for when purchasing a tripod for video. You can also watch “Gear Pt 2” (day 1, session 4) in Vincent Floret’s HDDSLR Cinema Workshop . He explains several of the same principles discussed in B&H’s buying guide. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Prefetch Content with HTML5 : This sounds too easy. Add a line like this to your head element: or … and the browser fetches the content in the background as soon as the user’s computer is idle. If it sounds too easy, it’s probably because Firefox is currently the only browser to support this feature. But this has the potential to be a really useful feature. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Redesign vs. Realign : Cameron Chapman offers updated commentary on my original article , published almost 5 years ago. In particular, I can endorse this recommendation, politician-advert-style: As far as exactly when a client should realign their site, the answer is as often as necessary. It should become a regular habit to review what’s working on their site and what isn’t, and to make adjustments as necessary. If goals aren’t being met, continuous tweaks to the functions, structure, content, and design of the site can move your clients closer to them… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

ESPN 2010 FIFA for iPhone : Just 10 days until the first game. ESPN’s app is a fairly solid experience for tracking scores, news, schedules, and the like. The New York Times reviewed several other apps , some of which also run on BlackBerry and Android. What’s interesting to me is that for the FIFA 2006 World Cup, SMS and the mobile web were the primary means of following scores and updates. In 2010, nearly all of us with something other than a Nokia will probably track the same with an app. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

A few months ago 37signals redesigned Basecamp ’s notification emails, and the result was a move from plain-text emails to HTML emails. For reference, these emails are sent when someone posts or replies to any of the content types in the system (messages, to-dos, etc). I’m generally opposed to receiving HTML emails if a plain-text alternate is available. I use email as a tool to send and receive communication, and too often some creators of HTML email offer visual noise more than anything else. Ironically, they fail to leverage one advantage HTML email has over plain-text email: visual hierarchy, or the ability to help the reader get the right message using color, proportion, and so forth. Visual hierarchy, the classification of elements according to importance and relationship to other elements, tends to be one of the most ignored and underutilized principles of design. … Read the rest here